It's that time of the month again. This is when we take a step back, reevaluate everything we just saw the past 4 weeks or so, and come back home to the longer-term charts. Life is easier when we're not fighting big trends. While it's important for us to try and identify price levels that could act as support and resistance, this exercise is to determine whether these assets are going up, down or sideways.

Regardless of our time horizon, I think it's important to take these 30-60 minutes a month to acknowledge the bigger trends. Once this is done, then we can work our way down to weekly and daily charts for execution purposes. I say it all the time - My Monthly Candlestick Review is the most valuable 6-10 hours of work I put in each year.

You can see the updated monthly charts for yourself here

This is what stood out this month:

In our most recent All Star Options monthly conference call, JC highlighted why he felt metals might be a good buy here. Inspired by his enthusiasm, we discussed a play in gold that could play nicely in the scenario he laid out.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Last week in our note to Institutional Clients we highlighted the potential for mean-reversion in the relative performance of Small and Micro-Caps, driven by rotation into Financials and Healthcare.

Below is a chart of the Micro-Cap Index (IWC) relative to the S&P 1500, confirming a failed breakdown and bullish momentum divergence. As long as prices are above 0.1405, this ratio looks ripe for some mean-reversion to the upside.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

Same goes for the Russell 2000 relative to the S&P 500, failing to hold its new marginal low as momentum diverges.

Here's the Russell 2000 breaking out of a 2 month long base on an absolute basis as well. For the first time in a while,...

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

With another potential failed breakout in the US Dollar setting up, here's the metals trade we're putting on.

This is the video recording of the May 2019 Conference Call for Members of All Star Options

With U.S. Markets back at All Time Highs, it would be irresponsible to be doing anything other than keeping close tabs on the price action leaders. And many of these leading stocks will currently be found in the Software sector.

Excuse my play on words in the title, but I wanted to make the point that at 13% of the Nifty 500, the Fast Moving Consumer Goods Index is a big part of the bull case for Indian stocks.

We've talked about weak participation in this sector and since then it's deteriorated further as opposed to getting better.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

While we wait to see whether or not this retest of all-time highs is a successful one, we want to define our risk on the long side in individual names that continue to lead the market higher.

One subsector that remains a consistent source of these setups is Software.

Below is a chart of Software relative to the Technology Sector overall, finding support right where it needed to at our previous price target. Whether prices can get back to their year-to-date highs will be an important tell, but for now the uptrend in this ratio remains strongly intact.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

One individual name that looks compelling at current levels is Coupa Software, which is breaking out of a 10-week base to new all-time highs. The stock could use a few days of consolidation before continuing higher, but from a risk management perspective we'd be buying a breakout above 103.25 and targeting 130.50 on the upside over the next 1-3 months.

...

Interest Rates in the United States hit new 52-week lows last month. But from the looks of it, the commodities market and stock market are not in agreement with that direction. It's when we see divergences among asset classes that it gets my attention.

Today we're looking at the divergences between stocks, bonds and commodities that I believe are pointing to higher rates this quarter. If we're going to take the weight-of-the-evidence approach, it's 2 to 1 in favor of rising interest rates. 

A Doctor would never diagnose a patient without first seeing what's going on inside. A mechanic won't be able to tell you what's wrong with your car without lifting the hood. It's no different in the market. How can we possibly judge the S&P500 without opening it up first to see what's happening among its components.

Today we're going to focus on the sectors themselves. We're looking at weekly candlestick charts for all of the 11 major sectors:

• Technology
• Real Estate
• Energy
• Healthcare
• Financials
• Consumer Discretionary
• Consumer Staples
• Utilities
• Industrials
• Materials
• Communication Services

How many sectors are making new highs? How many are making new lows? Are more of them starting to trend higher or are more of them starting to trend lower. In which direction are consolidations resolving, higher or lower?

Market Breadth means a lot of things to a lot of people. The way I see it, we're analyzing a market of stocks. There are a variety of tools to help us do that including the Advance-Decline Line, List of new highs & lows and the percentage of stocks getting overbought or oversold, which can be calculated in many ways. Today I'm joined by Andrew Thrasher in a video we shot earlier this month in New York. It's an important topic and I'm glad we had the chance to discuss it.

Shocking as it may seem, not all stocks and sectors are knocking on the door of new all-time highs. The clean energy sector is one of those neighborhoods. But that hasn't stopped us from digging in to find an opportunistic trade.